1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to systems used to facilitate communication amongst electronic devices. More particularly, the invention relates to assemblies that facilitate the interoperability amongst electronic communication devices of varying communication protocol platforms.
2. Description of the Related Art
The internet has made vast amounts of information available to anyone virtually anywhere. Fiber optic systems inexpensively allow people around the world to communicate with each other, either through voice or data via the internet. Voice over internet protocol (VOIP) is a technology that allows people to communicate even more efficiently by utilizing the speed provided through the internet to transmit voice communication. All in all, the world is a much more connected environment.
Be that as it may, tragedies at the turn of the 21st century illustrate the shortcomings of all of these communication networks. In particular, the terrorist attacks in the United States, the Asian tsunami, the earthquakes in Pakistan and India, and the devastations brought on to the southern portion of the United States due to hurricanes (including the flooding of New Orleans) illustrate that the communication networks currently available are inadequate because they do not operate with other systems. This prevents those that are first responders to tragedies from maximizing cooperative efforts to maximize the efforts made by all first responders. While the tragedies listed above are large in scope, first responders and those operating in smaller emergency situations encounter the same frustrations. Neighboring municipalities offering fire fighters to combat a fire often have difficulty communicating with each other. Kidnappings and school unrest often result in aggravation and frustration because initial information regarding the situation cannot be adequately disseminated.
Investments made by school districts and in municipalities in a particular communication technology are costly. With these types of governmental entities having smaller and smaller amounts of resources, they are not willing to abandon all investments in these technologies for the sake of being interoperable with other departments and/or other municipalities. This problem even exists in the differing agencies throughout the United States. By example, the National Guard may have difficulty communicating with the Army should both agencies be called to a particular emergency, which may be coordinated by a third civilian agency that cannot effectively communicate with responders from either organization.
One solution to this problem is to translate all of the electronic communications from one platform to another platform. This is difficult because the communications produced by the first platform that is being translated is not adapted to provide the necessary information to easily transform the communications into the other platform.
A second alternative solution to this problem is to connect all of the possible communication devices together whereby each of the communication devices are capable of communicating with each other. These systems are brought together in a command center type truck having racks of electronics that receive electronic signals to digitize them and place them in various protocols that would allow them to be received by electronic devices of differing platforms. These types of command centers are cost prohibitive and require huge amounts of coordination to get a command center to a particular site in time to aid those that are responding to the particular event.
The concept of a command center is counter-intuitive in many instances. Command centers are large and require a stable area from which to stage the communications effort. Once in place, a large amount of power is required. In emergency situations, power is not a given, so back-up power supplies are needed, further increasing the size and cost of a command center.